Once upon a time, the PC was pitted against the mainframe in the tussle between freedom and control. Now it's PC versus PC. In this sound clip (1 min 15 secs, mp3) from yesterday's conversation with Ray Ozzie, we hear about an employee with two side-by-side laptops. He does all his work on the home PC, because it has the productivity tools he needs. Then he transfers the results to his locked-down work PC by way of a USB thumbdrive.
Freedom and control. There's no easy way to reconcile these things. I wonder if machine virtualization, a la Virtual PC, will be one way we bring the separate domains a little closer together. People want -- and arguably need -- to try out the new toys that IT can't control. Maybe IT should institutionalize a sandbox in which to do that.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/09/17.html#a1078